SCO, 03/05/2024

Vaughan Williams : Concerto Grosso*

Vaughan Williams : The Lark Ascending (Stephanie Gonley, violin)

Vaughan Williams : Symphony No. 5

Scottish Chamber Orchestra

*SCO Academy

Andrew Manze

Andrew Manze is probably the foremost advocate of Vaughan Williams's orchestral music today, his admiration and affection for these scores is plain to see and hear, so it's a particular privilege to get a full concert purely of Vaughan Williams.  There was an extra reason for this tonight, the opportunity to hear the Concerto Grosso, a later work that is not one of his better-known pieces, but displays some remarkably innovative musical thinking in terms of music for students (and Vaughan Williams had a strong history of writing for young and/or amateur musicians), and was the chance to show off the work of the SCO Academy for the current session.  

The SCO Academy is a new programme, bringing together young musicians from various Edinburgh and Glasgow schools - all string players, at least this year - for two weekends of intensive workshopping to play alongside the SCO itself and prepare a work for performance.  Vaughan Williams's Concerto Grosso was written in 1950 for the Rural Schools' Music Association, and he devised it so the players were split into three groups based on level of technical ability.  The most advanced were the Concertino group, at a median level were the Tutti, and near-beginners, or Novices, played in the "Ad-Lib" group.  The music for this last is mostly written on open strings which, to all intents and purposes, means that on condition your instrument is properly tuned to begin with, you cannot really play out of tune.  As anyone who has experienced an average school orchestra knows, this can be a real issue for novice string players, and most of them are acutely aware of the fact.  To be able to play advanced music with the kind of assurance Vaughan Williams offered by this wort of writing must be really quite satisfying.  

Otherwise, the structure of the piece in terms of distribution of voices is distinctly reminiscent of the Tallis Fantasia, but this Concerto Grosso is a five-piece suite, more concrete and robust than the ethereal Fantasia, though not lacking in poetry.  The stage bristled with a veritable forest of bows; I think that every desk basically had one SCO player, and one Academy player to it.  I have to say I rarely really heard three groups in action - two, certainly, but distinguishing the third was a little trickier - but the sound was well-nourished and secure, and the interpretation as a whole quite stylish.

It's a very different sound-world from the semi-Impressionistic haze of The Lark Ascending.  I've expressed elsewhere in this blog my opinion of the differences between performances given by a concert soloist, and those given by an orchestral soloist.  The principal of any orchestra section is, of course, every bit as much a virtuoso as any performer who specialises as a solo concert artist, s/he has to be.  However, the rapport with the orchestra is different, the soloist is more integrated into the overall picture.  Stephanie Gonley is the leader of the SCO, and her spiralling, trilling lark floated gently above the pastoral landscape painted by the orchestra, not perturbed by unnecessary flash and dash, but simple and unaffected.

The concluding work was what is arguably Vaughan Williams's greatest symphony, the luminous, spiritual 5th.  It has always been a particularly interesting piece; completed in 1942, in the darkest days of the war, it speaks of hope and resolution, yet falls between two far more aggressive works, the turbulent 6th, and the enraged scream of the 4th.  It calls on a smaller orchestra - which is what puts it within the scope of the SCO - and draws heavily on music Vaughan Williams was writing for his opera The Pilgrim's Progress.  (I also hear, quite a lot, an echo of the Gerald Finzi song "Fear no more the heat o' the sun" from Let Us Garlands Bring, which was published in 1942, though the song itself may date from as early as 1929).  The movements are all strongly interlinked, with points of recall at every turn, which Manze teased out skilfully, drawing all the threads together, with a particularly tender slow movement, and a sense of true repose in the quiet finish.  

[Next: 4th May]